


Let My Love Be Your Blue Sky

by cricket_aria



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: F/M, Falling in love with the devil you know, brief mentions of an unsuccessful sexual assault attempt, stalked by bird, that fine line between antagonism and lust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:40:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24433699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cricket_aria/pseuds/cricket_aria
Summary: The owl was miserably drenched by rain in the tree outside her window, and Sarah could ignore him no more.
Relationships: Jareth/Sarah Williams
Comments: 4
Kudos: 150
Collections: Writing Rainbow Make Up Round





	Let My Love Be Your Blue Sky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AmorousGreen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmorousGreen/gifts).



Sarah sat in her rocking chair, sipping too-sweet tea and staring out at the drenched owl sitting on a branch directly across from her bedroom window. For its part the owl studiously avoided looking at her, hunched up miserably and staring at the wall just to the side of her window for all the world as if he had no idea she was even there. She might have believed his lack of interest if it weren’t for the fact that any _actual_ bird would have long since found shelter from the rain that was pouring down around it.

Finally she took pity on him and slid the window up, leaning against the frame in spite of the way the wind immediately began blowing the rain straight into her face. “You know, you didn’t need to follow me to Seattle if you don’t like rain,” she called out, her tone dry. “There’s a rain forest only a few hours away, that should have been a hint what you were in for.”

Once there’d been a time when she had pretended to herself that she didn’t realize there was anything strange about how often she saw barn owls hovering close by. That she’d never seen a man dissolving into a bird when his world crumbled around them both. It was easier that way, she didn’t need to stress about whether she should be afraid, whether it was just waiting to see her slip so it could swoop in and either take revenge or lure her back into a beautiful impossible world.

But she stopped bothering to pretend as the years rolled by and nothing happened. She’d seen feathers ruffling out of the corner of her eye at so many of her lowest hours—when she’d broken her arm a day before opening night the only time she’d gotten a lead role in a school play, the time her mother had canceled their plans to spend a holiday together for the third time in a row and she’d locked herself in her bedroom and cried so hard she almost suffocated with it, all the lows of a teenager’s life—but he’d never made any move to use her pain during them. She’d even been glad to see the bird perched in a tree above her on the night of her junior prom, when she’d needed to knee her date in the groin and make a break for it when he was a little too insistent that _everyone_ knew you were supposed to Do It on prom night. Any worries she’d had about getting away cleanly faded when she those large round eyes gleaming down at her in the night; even though she’d still worried then that he only saw her as prey she was absolutely _certain_ that he would never allow anyone else to be her predator.

(The following Monday when classmates had asked her if she had any idea why Kevin had suddenly transferred schools so close to the end of the year Sarah had just smiled and shrugged without saying a word.)

She’d grown used to him hovering over her life to the point that when she’d moved across the country she hadn’t even been surprised the first time she’d drawn her curtains and had seen him antsily trying out unfamiliar branches in search of the best perch. Any final doubts she’d had about whether she was reading too much into how often she saw barn owls in her life fled when he’d spotted her then and had immediately stilled and tried to draw himself up with dignity. No real bird could have felt embarrassment at being caught trying to make itself comfortable.

She never knew whether he’d just happened to see her when he’d found the best branch, or if he was too proud to ever shift from the one her gaze had forced him into choosing, but from then on she never saw him on another from her bedroom. That night in the rain it would have been better for him if he did, there were places in the tree that were better-sheltered if he’d only such up his pride and move to them.

But if he had she wouldn’t have shifted over after making her initial jibe at him and said, “All right, then, you’d better come in before you drown.”

He did nothing for a long moment, and she started to think he might just ignore her offer completely. Or, worse, that it would turn out that she’d been reading way too much into having what was just a perfectly normal owl living in the tree outside her window. Then she turned her back to the window to her return to her chair, and almost immediately heard him scrambling in behind her. She couldn’t help but grin as she suddenly suspected he just hadn’t wanted her to see him make an undignified entrance, a bedraggled bird awkwardly struggling through a window a far cry from a handsome king swooping in on a breeze.

“I don’t have any dead mice to offer up to an owl,” she said, keeping her back turned lest he decide again that he didn’t want to let her see him in his current state, “but I have food I could share with a man if one needed to get out of the rain.”

There was the strangest sense of space being filled behind her, she could _feel_ that she was no longer alone even before he spoke. “Have you decided to allow me my true form at last, Sarah?”

She frowned deeply as she turned to face. “What are you _talking_ about?” she asked, as she took his human form back in at last. He looked much the way he had when she’d last seen him, though his cloak of feathers and leggings had gone a dirty gray. “You’re the one who’s been stalking me from the treetops all these years, Jareth. I never told you to play bird if you felt like checking in on me.”

“You _won_ , did you never realized what that means?” he snapped back, a dangerous glint in his eye though she thought she recognized it as the one that was him playing to her expectations rather than true anger. “Never once, while playing with your little friends, did you wonder why they could only be there when you called for them?”

“Because goblins don’t exactly run around my world normally,” she responded, suddenly uncertain about her answer under his gaze.

“They did before. When I was in my strength they could lurk behind the door of every frustrated older sister, every bratty younger brother, every human who might speak the right words and call them to swoop in an bring a new citizen to the Underground. If one had wanted to come out of the shadows to say hello… Well, I would have had their ears for a necklace, but they would have been able to.” He stalked up to her, still tall enough to glare down at her even after the one last growth spurt she’d had post-Labyrinth, and his voice lowered to a menacing purr that no longer frightened her as it once would have, “ _When_ I was in my power. But then you won our game, Sarah, and now you act as though you somehow didn’t even notice the way my world crumbled around your dainty feet.”

“Of course I noticed!” she protested, meeting his eyes boldly, “I hope you don’t expect an apology. I might not have meant to do it, but if that was what it took to save Toby—”

“Yes, yes, you remain terribly heroic,” he cut her off, raising one hand to gracefully wave her words away. He was so close the movement sent his fingertips through the ends of her hair. “My world fell down for you, Sarah, and now only exists so far as you allow it to. I’ve watched as you’ve allowed even a number of my own goblin soldiers, even _the Fierys_ who would have torn your head from your lovely neck, to exist by your will, and yet I have remained an owl all this time, only able to regain my form in the land of dreams.”

“Have you ever even _tried_?” she snapped back at the implication that she’d somehow been forcing him into a lesser form for so long. “Just because I wouldn’t choose you over my brother doesn’t mean I didn’t want—” Her mouth clicked shut as she cut herself off this time, a hot blush flooding into her face as she realized what she was beginning to say. It only grew worse when she saw him cock an eyebrow up, and when he began opening his mouth to make some sort of response she covered his lips with her hand before he could manage it then drew herself up with a deep breath. Her will was as strong as his, and she was no longer a sixteen-year-old child besides. She could face him without being flustered. “If you’d ever tried to visit me, like this, without Toby’s safety being at risk I wouldn’t have tried to stop you. I can’t say that I would have welcomed you with open arms if you’d tried it right after we escaped your Labyrinth, but I wouldn’t have tried to stop you from existing.”

“And now?” he asked, an apparent non sequitur that he clarified when she made a confused noise in response, “You say you would not have welcomed me with open arms back then. And now?”

She stared at him for a long moment, hardly believing that he would try making a move on her just moments after he’d accused her of trapping her in another body for so long. But as she tried to formulate a response she thought back to how familiar his presence had become over the years. How more than once when a perfectly nice person had asked her out she would think of the possibility of inhuman eyes watching her from the trees above and wonder whether ‘perfectly nice’ was really enough for her. How on her most frightening night in the mundane world the sight of him had set her at ease, trusting that he would see her safe. 

How disappointed she’d briefly been just a short time before, when he’d made no move at her invitation and she’d thought she might have been wrong about who he was all along.

Slowly she said, “I won’t fear you, Jareth. I won’t do as you say just because you say it. And I don’t love you, not now. But… What did you do to Kevin. The boy you saw my run from, the night of the big dance you saw me at.”

“He is haunted by rather terrible dreams about what will happen if he ever lays eyes on you again. Less than he deserves for trying to put his hands on you, but as much as I could do with the limits on my powers. I fail to see why you would be thinking of him _now._ ”

“Because you were thinking of me then. You did something for my sake, and you didn’t try to twist it to your own advantage or to get anything in returned.” Slowly she reached out and touched his cheek with just the tips of her fingers, gingerly as if he might burst into flames beneath her hand for having the audacity to lay hands on him uninvited. “I won’t promise you anything. I know better than to trap myself that way. But if you want to walk beside me for a while, and if you keep thinking of me like that instead of like I’m a doll to dance for your amusement, maybe ‘I don’t love you now’ could really be ‘I don’t love you yet.’”


End file.
